Talk:Two Thieves
Sounds. . . . Intriguing. Speaking of short stories. . . . Turtle Fan 20:25, November 13, 2009 (UTC) :......yes? TR 22:42, November 13, 2009 (UTC) ::Oh, sorry. I continued that thought on the Trantor Falls talk page. Turtle Fan 22:52, November 13, 2009 (UTC) :::Yeah, I figured that out well after I posted. TR 22:56, November 13, 2009 (UTC) Yes, I did secure a copy. TR 00:23, April 13, 2012 (UTC) :Cool. Turtle Fan 03:34, April 13, 2012 (UTC) ::Most excellent! ML4E 18:26, April 13, 2012 (UTC) Thoughts on Riverworld Is Tales of Riverworld in print or not? No library near me has it. I read all 5 volumes of Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld, and had mixed reactions. The first two books are basically Star Trek: The Savage Curtain or Night at the Museum on a grandiose scale, and lots of fun is had with the cultural clashes and anachronisms, plus the world-building. The quality takes a nosedive in volume 3, where the POV characters from the first 2 books are shunted aside and replaced by new ones, including a hyperactively discrimination-phobic feminazi and a self portrait of PJF. It seems like half the book consists of two kinds of scenes: recapping what happened in the first two volumes, and soliloquies where the two aforementioned characters piss and moan about their unresolved Freudian issues. In the meantime, we learn through expositions-r-us that a planet-shaking event which changed the nature of Riverworld and is literally the most important development in the series, happened completely offstage, leading one to think that "Two Thieves" was not the only HT story modeled on PJF's style. *cough*The War That Came Early*cough* Volume 4 has Samuel Clemens, the sympathetic and admirable hero of earlier volumes, turning into Riverworld's biggest asshole by his act of negligence which leads to a near-genocide, all to satisfy his Captain Ahab-style grudge. Finally at the end of Volume 4, the Big Reveal to the Mystery comes, and it was Scooby-Doo all along! No, wait, at the beginning of Volume 5 we learn that this was a fake Scooby-Doo, and the real Scooby-Doo was this other person all along! No wait, it was this person! No, this person! Then PJF changes his mind about the story he wanted to tell, and we basically enter Star Trek: Shore Leave. Then, one more Scooby-Doo appears, and oh wait, it has to twist this other way, so now this is the true honest-to-God Scooby-Doo, and the story can end. It does so with a finale that states that while all this was going on, a lot more events were happening offstage, and these events would have made better stories in their own right than the repetitious drivel we actually got. I hate it when a series starts out good, hooks me, and then turns to utter crap. *cough*Southern Victory*cough*.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 08:43, November 13, 2016 (UTC) :It's not in print. TR (talk) 18:49, November 13, 2016 (UTC) ::Now that's a bummer. I was lucky, just now, to find an online bootleg, and it does seem, judging by this one story (which I just now read), that the collection focuses more on the early phase of Riverworld when it was in its lively, playful Night at the Museum mode.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 07:49, November 15, 2016 (UTC) Riverworldfan Wiki The wiki Jonathan has been linking to namely this has almost no useful information and a waste of user's time to follow. (Check some of the links for yourself especially the useless one sentence biographical articles Jonathan created today.) I propose the original information from the Wikipedia article be restored. This could be revisited if anything useful comes of riverworldfan. ML4E (talk) 01:00, November 16, 2016 (UTC) :The Riverworld wiki seems to have been created only a few weeks ago, but will presumably grow, if only we will have patience. Also, the "Two Thieves" character articles say "Like everyone who lived and died on Earth, this person was resurrected on Riverworld." Actually this is not true. It is an important point in the Farmer storyline that several groups of people from Earth were pointedly not to be found on the planet, and a large part of the series is devoted to investigating the mystery of why these people are absent, ultimately resulting in a lame-ass Scooby-Doo answer. Thus the article openings should be changed to "Like billions of others who lived and died on Earth..."JonathanMarkoff (talk) 01:05, November 16, 2016 (UTC) ::It may well be that Riverworldfan will grow but it is useless right now and so the original Wikipedia links should be restored. If Riverworldfan grows, the issue can be revisited but for now it would be a disservice to the users of this wiki. However, I would not object to a link for this story article to encourage others to add to it. ::I am aware that not everyone was resurrected but your Carl Sagan "billions" is uninformative. As far as most resurectees are concerned, everyone five and over was resurrected so it should read "Like everyone five and older". For the purposes of this story articles, that is what the characters know. Those complications you mention are unnecessary for this purpose. ML4E (talk) 01:23, November 16, 2016 (UTC) ::The Riverworldan wiki was created in 2010. I went looking for anything pertaining to Riverworld on wikia back in 2012 when I wrote the articles, and it certainly didn't appear on my radar. Jonathan has done more work in the last couple of days than has been done in prior 6 years. I seriously doubt growth is coming by way of this wiki. ::Moreover, while the main wikipedia page isn't great, it's considerably better developed than the very nuts and bolts of Riverworld Wiki. ::Nor do I see much value in linking articles to stubs at this point. If those articles more than just OTL paragraphs, I could see it. ::If the Riverworld doesn't reanimate everyone, then I agree with editing our article. TR (talk) 01:33, November 16, 2016 (UTC) :::I don't see any point to linking to such a half-assed Wiki, especially if it's been around so long. Even if it were new, it would be on them to get to the point where they'd be useful before we linked. I have no opinion on the other issue. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:04, November 16, 2016 (UTC) ::::I hope linking to it here will make people aware of it and increase the chances that someone will really do something with it.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 04:11, November 16, 2016 (UTC) :::::We've linked to several wikis at this point. Nothing suggests we've had any impact. Asimov and Lovecraft have less than a 1000 pages, and those are both authors who almost certainly have wider followings than Harry Turtledove. We are not going to get Riverworld jump started. TR (talk) 05:07, November 16, 2016 (UTC) :::::This is why I am agreeable to a link in the story article only, to encourage others to do some work on it rather than it being a useful resource at this time (since it is not). ML4E (talk) 18:17, November 17, 2016 (UTC) ::::::Because of this, I'm going to put extra effort in the next few days to building up something to justify Riverwiki's existence, mainly by copying and pasting from Wikipedia etcetera.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 22:54, November 16, 2016 (UTC) :::::::Ooh, that'll show us! And how is regurgitating information that's available for free elsewhere, and easier to find at that, going to justify the existence of anything? Turtle Fan (talk) 08:33, November 17, 2016 (UTC) :::::::Typical laziness on your part. Pretending to do useful work while just cut and past and/or useless fiddle work. I am temptrd to roll-back the changes anyway. ML4E (talk) 18:17, November 17, 2016 (UTC)